In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their
liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties
and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances and admit to
infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule;
and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle.
The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men, each to
govern himself, and suffer any artificial, positive limitation upon
those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government
becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the
constitution of a state and the due distribution of its powers a
matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a
deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the
things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be
pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have
recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is
the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine?
The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them.
In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the
farmer and the physician rather than the professor of metaphysics.
The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or
reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be
taught a priori.
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